The political impact of NAFTA on Mexico: Reflections on the political economy of democratization

Abstract

This article revisits debates about the role NAFTA played in hastening Mexico's democratic transition. It finds that neither the advocates nor the critics of NAFTA anticipated the ruling PRI party's loss of control over the presidency in 2000. Although NAFTA may have contributed to the various political crises that had been erupting since the 1970s, it was just one of several forces that shaped the country's democratic transition. Moreover, while economic liberalization certainly spurred popular mobilization, it was the perceived failures of the particular modernization strategy undertaken by the PRI, not market reforms per se, that eroded single-party rule. Mexico's democratic transition is more usefully understood by focusing on how the PRI's particular brand of political and economic reform catalyzed its own bases of opposition. The increased willingness of voters to opt for untried political alternatives, and the rise of civil society, opposition parties and a more participatory mass politics were all endogenous to the domestic political system.